Intel Core i5 12600K / Core i9 12900K "Alder Lake" Linux Performance

[birdie]

So, having read quite a lot of reviews here are some pertinent and important conclusions:

• Intel has pushed their P-cores for MT scenarios to extremes to be the absolute performance king and at least be faster than 5900X and rival 5950X in many cases. This results in an insane power consumption out of the box but only for heavy MT tasks, e.g. video encoding, rendering, software compilation, math calculations - not something average people do daily.
• This extreme power consumption does not translate into every day scenarios like modestly threaded applications or games - in fact many reviewers show that ADL CPUs are the most power efficient in games. Igor's Lab, AnandTech and computerbase.de have shown that limiting their TDP to 125W or even lower does not meaningfully affect frame rates.
• It seems very likely that if P-cores maximum frequency is decreased by just 200-300MHz their efficiency will be incredible.
• Factory OC'ing is not new and NVIDIA, AMD, Apple have been doing that for at least a couple of years. No one is crying foul because of that.

TLDR: Overall ADL CPUs are great sans an extreme factory OC for heavy MT scenarios which can be easily mitigated by limiting their power consumption by setting the PL1 limit in BIOS. At the moment the only issue is the price of the platform because even though the CPUs are competitively priced, you need to purchase a quite expensive motherboard, DDR5 RAM (the faster the better) and a decent cooling solution (preferably AIO).

Too many reviewers are fishing for views and ad revenue, so having loud and disparaging headlines which aren't necessarily representative of the real world is their way of achieving that which is quite sad.

[blackshard]

A major caveat is that you are claiming that it will _not_ work - while I am claiming that it will work.

Was I claiming it would not work?
Did you read the post or just hitting keys at random?
Actually I said a way how could it work: handle the fault (illegal operation, in this case) at runtime.

Again: next time read better.

[L_A_G]

First off, try to remain fair in your comparisons, or you will end up comparing God-knows-who to whoever you hate next. Learn about others before you hate them, because hate is dumb. And this as true for the IT industry as it is for racism, misogyny, homophobia, antisemitism, and so on.

Maybe you're too young to remember what Intel did back in the day, but they were literally paying billions (with a b) in under-the-table deals to all the major OEMs so they wouldn't sell any systems or as few as possible with AMD processors. The primary reason for this being that their then-current Netburst architecture parts simply weren't competitive with AMD's then-current K8 architecture. Eventually this was discovered, but by that point AMD had been financially hurt by this so badly that they just didn't have the R n' D budgets to compete with the new Core architecture Intel had developed in the mean time. After that AMD basically faded into obscurity and Intel were able to force OEMs and customers into servitude in the desktop, server and laptop x86 markets due to there not being any real competition anymore.

We only saw AMD appear back on the CPU thanks to being able to get into video game consoles and finally having the money to develop the Zen architecture.

This is the same level of immorality as Monsanto's argrochem division that introduced GMO seeds of crops like corn that are only just enough to out-compete non-GMO seeds even with the ban on using previous crops as seed grain, drove the non-GMO seed producers out of the market and then raised prices forcing farmers effectively into Monsanto servitude where they had to buy new seeds every year or get sued. Even with crops were they haven't driven out the non-GMO competition the division will sue farmers who've never bought any of their seeds if they find that there's been accidental cross-pollination with the fiends of farmers that do buy their seeds.

[sdack]

... but Intel is an order of magnitude worse.

Then you will be able to explain this quite reasonably and not just by pointing fingers. Looking forward to your explanation of why Intel is worse, and why they are worse by a magnitude.

[sdack]

I think the word you missed there was "semiconductor" as it's not exactly like you can do the same kind of damage as a semiconductor company as a chemicals company.

Highly immoral business moves like the cartel they ran in the mid 2000s to keep AMD out ...

First off, try to remain fair in your comparisons, or you will end up comparing God-knows-who to whoever you hate next. Learn about others before you hate them, because hate is dumb. And this as true for the IT industry as it is for racism, misogyny, homophobia, antisemitism, and so on.

I will then tell the same as I already told numacross. Back in those days did Intel certainly allow for competition. We had quite a few CPU architectures from various makers. To name a few were there Motorola, Sun, HP, SGI, Dec, IBM, Arm, and then some smaller businesses. They all were competing with each other and created a wealth of new CPU technologies. Only then came those companies, who were too big to fail, and so had to copy from Intel's success. There were no two ways about who was the winner. Any company would then have done the same as Intel and have tried to fight off the copies. AMD to this day fights legal battles over its own patents whenever there is a win for them. If it had not been the highly prestigious computer industry, but say a bunch of banana importers, then chances might have been for Intel to keep hold of their success. To split up a market in a country like the US, known for its strong liberalism and capitalism, has much to do with politics. Anyhow, Intel was forced to allow others to copy their design and that was that.

To not see the controversy, but to want this to be some kind of act of justice is only childish. As I said do I prefer AMD. I have reasons for it. I do not hate Intel, but I know where both companies come from. I have always admired Intel for their boldness and drive to push the industry forward. They have been pioneers from the first today on. I prefer however AMD as a developer, because some of their CPUs have a more elegant design, making it a little bit easier to focus on the software. I did not like how Intel's NetBurst architecture created ever longer instruction pipelines and caused longer stalls. Nor did I like HyperThreading, which forced one to get out of one's way for a 30% gain, if there was a gain to be had at all. Intel's pioneering efforts also cost more than only copying somebody else's design and reiterating on it, and the higher prices did not appeal to me when the next generation of hardware was already being worked on (not to mention how Moore's Law kept predicting it). There is however no reason to hate Intel. It is only dumb.

[blackshard]

[Sarcasm] The situation is much worse than you think: The OS doesn't even know in advance whether any memory load/store instruction in the program causes a page fault or not.

The difference between a memory instruction and an AVX-512 instruction is that it happens to be the case that page faults have hardware support, while AVX-512 faults on an E-core don't have a dedicating fault mechanism but generate a generic "invalid-opcode exception (#UD)". If Intel was serious about making heterogeneous computing work, they could have simply added a new class of exceptions to Alder Lake. (Or maybe they did add the new exceptions, but left them undocumented for now. Maybe it is a hidden part of Intel Thread Director.)

Can't understand what sarcasm is there about pointing out what I already said; but hey, let's talk about MMU and page faults because it makes me feel cool to show off how learned I am! Yeah! (that's sarcasm)

Read better next time.

[numacross]

Exactly. You allowed for the comparison to stand.

In case it gets too complicated for you, how about I compare AMD to Monsanto, and we then argue about what Intel does better than AMD? There is a lot Intel has done for the industry, which makes AMD look like a bunch of suckers.

Again, this Monsanto stuff is not an argument with me.

There is also a lot Intel has done that negatively impacted the industry, for which they lost in court multiple times, and had to pay billions in damages. But be my guest, and glorify the company
If you think this is an endorsement for AMD, then you need to stop projecting. Both have done "bad things", but Intel is an order of magnitude worse.

[drakonas777]

I'd like to point out that, at least for the time being, any performance/$ figures for Alder Lake (and especially 12600k) are highly misleading since Alder Lake compatible motherboards start at $200+, while for Rocket Lake and Zen3 you can get a perfectly serviceable motherboard for $100. Also, DDR5 pricing is a bad joke.

Not only that. AL power draw is much higher, meaning you also need more expensive cooling solution and better VRMs to extract maximum performance.

[Archestratus]

foobaz,

Thank you! Five months? I had not realized. I am reasonably patient - but not that reasonably patient. And by then, there will be some other reason to wait, anyway . . .

Core i5-10400 makes sense to me. My kind benefactor has been trying to tempt me into a tenth generation i7 - but I am learly about heat/noise. Any guidance on a tenth gen i5 vs. i7 would be most welcome. Looking for another quiet 10 year+ build . . .

You wrote: "I recommend getting 16 GB RAM (or more) and as large of an M.2 SSD as you can afford."

Looks good to me.

The one I was looking at has room for four sticks of RAM - room to bulk up with additional used RAM in five years or so if need be.

----------------------------------

rclark,

Thank you! Liked your story on the CPU upgrades - yeah! I used the same Gigabyte Motherboard for many years through numerous upgrades. Underclocked and undervolted - for quiet's sake - 'til the capacitor plague did it in. Loud "POP" and flames coming out of the computer. Instinctively ripped the plug. Smoke. Open window. Wond'ring what would have happened if I had been asleep . . . But that gave the excuse to upgrade to modern 2008+ components - if it's broke, fix it - which is where I am today.

My current computer is not slow. It's just - deliberate.

I think I'll probably go with the tenth generation Intel for the integrated GPU. I think that might work out better for me than the AMD plus video card. I'll take a deeper dive into what Dell offers, either way.

16 GB of RAM sounds good. 4GB (max affordable on my current board) is my current bottleneck. Along with all the other current bottlenecks . . .

---------------------------------

yump,

Thank you! I have been torturing myself with the choice between the hotter/louder eleventh generation CPUs with the better integrated GPU vs. the quieter, less capable tenth generation CPU/GPU integrated solution. Quiet is primo for me - I'll probably opt for quiet over performance.

Then again . . . YouTube videos are of interest . . .

Next year for an appropriate 12th generation / Ubuntu solution is farther out than I had hoped. I think will pull the trigger sooner.

Abysmally slow? Abysmally slow? Quiet - it knows what you are saying.

This computer is not slow, as such. I just think of it as being very - thoughtful.

I just looked at the link that you were kind enough to post - it's making sense. Any idea of the noise level on an eleventh generation vs. a tenth? I just have my reading and conjecture - no direct experience.

Foobaz. RClark. Yump.

Thanks, all.

I am still wrestling with 10th vs. 11th gen.

Right back where I was struggling before the 12th generation popped up.

Only now - more so.

I guess I am more of a glider pilot than a Bell X-1 man.

Still - power can sure be tempting . . .

Good morning -

Archestratus

[L_A_G]

You neither know Intel nor Monsanto, or you would not ever compare them to one another.

I think the word you missed there was "semiconductor" as it's not exactly like you can do the same kind of damage as a semiconductor company as a chemicals company.

Highly immoral business moves like the cartel they ran in the mid 2000s to keep AMD out is biggest reason why I consider them to the the Monsanto of the semiconductor world. They didn't just run this cartel where they paid OEMs literal billions to not buy AMD processors, they still don't think they did anything wrong and are still in the process of disputing the fine they got from the EU for it and haven't paid a single cent.

Then there's also how they stagnated and their business basically turned into flat out rent seeking after AMD's play on just having a much higher degree of parallelism didn't pan out due to most software still being very single thread bound.